They're Just Super

In a new commemorative book, "Marvel Comics: 75 Years of Cover Art," Alan Cowsill describes the groundbreaking approach that allowed Marvel Comics to humanize its superheroes.

By

Alexandra Wolfe

Aug. 15, 2014 3:46 p.m. ET

Superheroes—they're just like us! In a new commemorative book titled "Marvel Comics: 75 Years of Cover Art" (DK Publishing; $50), editor and author Alan Cowsill describes the groundbreaking approach that allowed the company to humanize its superheroes. Starting in the early 1960s, he says, characters were allowed to grapple not just with supervillains but with everyday problems such as paying rent and navigating complicated love lives. Marvel also began incorporating current events into its narratives, which allowed Spider-Man, for instance, to swing through the campus demonstrations of the protest era....